A month has gone since we came back. As I imagined, things got incredibly busy here after three months of being away. So – after we managed to wash and unpack everything and after saying hello to family and friends – we were instantly right in the middle of gigs, recordings, phonecalls etc. This is really the first day when I have the time to sit down and write this post – to finish our story and look back to our three months adventure.
Last week we did a little session of screening and talk to our friends about our trip to Brazil. They really enjoyed it but they admitted that they were a bit suspicious at the beginning – I am sure everybody has the experience of looking at boring holiday pictures of friends or family. We learnt a long time ago that whatever we see as tourist may only be interesting for us – this is not a transferable experience. But this is only true if you are tourists – if you meet real life, if you talk about real people and if you have stories to tell, it is a completely different case. And we certainly did not feel that we were tourists. For our friends our experience was very enjoyable – partly thanks to our artistic and fantastic little films, of course – but partly because we had stories to tell about Jenny, Maria Louise, Claudio, Joao, Lenita, Anina, Dulce, Ryff etc: all the marvellous people who we met and worked with during our stay. And they all were amazed by what we – especially Robi – achieved with the children. If one looks back to previous posts and listen to where these girls started from, it is really amazing how much they learnt. Here are some video of their performances and also, of the two songs we taught them.
We finally managed to edit more videos of the concert. Our whole idea was to show to an audience how great these kids were, that their work can be performed alongside professional musicians, and that they are able to entertain their audiences. They did a great job and all their teachers were very proud of them. Robi also invited his friends and – as the children did – he also showed how much he learnt on the guitar. Here are some more videos of the concert.
Our last video is about the city that was our home for three months. Curitiba is a very nice town to live in – it is safe, its people are rather cool, it is very multinational and the climate is bearable. It has some fantastic parks, good restaurants and a nice centre. Finally, on our last weekend we managed to be tourists in Curitiba and see its famous buildings and streets. Robi complained that winter arrived just when he left the city. It is especially heavy in Curitiba because it gets cold but it gets cold only for some days or weeks so people don’t invest in heating therefore the inhabitants are frozen for these days. Robi knew that it was time to come back to the summer in Hungary. As I mentioned earlier, I went to Ireland almost straight from Brazil where the weather was awful – cold and rain for the whole time. I was shocked – thankfully we had no such extremes while we were in Brazil.
Of course we freaked out when we heard about the Air France plane accident – Robi took the Air France Rio – Paris flight a couple of weeks before this happened. Even worse – we knew the Hungarian guy very well who was on the plane. I used to work with him on the A38 Ship – a music venue I used to manage. He was a very interesting guy and our prayers are with him and his family.
Although life is happening here in full speed, we think a lot about Brazil and our fantastic three months there. We definitely want to return because we miss our friends and the music very much. Again, thanks for everybody who made this happen for us – we are very grateful. As I really enjoyed writing this blog, I may continue writing (not this one though) – this is really good fun. And we learnt to use a very simple film editing programme which is also great. Well, good bye – anybody who reads it and wants to contact us, please do at agancs@gmail.com. And to close this, here is Robi’s real heritage – this is the gypsy music and virtuosity he was brought up with.
